Dark Sacred Night

12

The search team was waiting outside Pacoima Tire & Muffler when the current owner opened up for a day of business. To say he was surprised by the police presence that greeted him was an understatement. After lifting the garage door, he held his arms aloft and stared wide-eyed at the vehicles amassed in front of him. Bosch was the first out of his car and the first to get to him.

“Mr. Cardinale?” he said. “You can put your hands down. I’m Detective Bosch with the San Fernando Police Department. We have a search warrant for these premises.”

“What?” Cardinale said. “What are you talking about?”

Bosch handed him the warrant.

“It’s a search warrant,” he said. “Signed by a judge. And it allows us to search for specific evidence relating to a crime.”

“What crime?” Cardinale said. “I run a clean business. I’m not like the guy who was here before.”

“We know that, sir. The crime relates to the prior ownership of the business but we still need to search, because we believe the evidence may still be in place.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no crime here.”

It took Bosch several more exchanges before Cardinale seemed to understand what was happening. He was about fifty with a midlife paunch and gray thinning hair. His hands were scarred from a lifetime spent working on cars. He had blurred blue tattoos on his forearms that looked to Bosch like old military insignia.

“How long ago did you take over the business?” Bosch asked.

“Eight years,” Cardinale said. “I bought it for cash. No loan. My own hard-earned money.”

“When you bought it, did you make any changes inside?”

“A lot of changes. I brought in all new tools. I modernized. Cleared out the old shit.”

“What about the structure of the building? Any changes?”

“I spruced things up. Patched and painted, the usual. Inside and out.”

Bosch assessed the building. It was standard cinder-block construction. Solid on the outside.

“What did you patch?”

“Holes in the walls, broken windows. I can’t remember everything I did.”

“You remember any bullet holes?”

That gave Cardinale pause. His eyes drifted away from Bosch’s as he remembered taking over the shop.

“Are you saying somebody got shot here?” he asked.

“No, not at all,” Bosch said. “We’re looking for bullets that were shot into the walls.”

Cardinale nodded and seemed relieved.

“Yeah, there were bullet holes,” he said. “I mean, they looked like bullet holes. I had ’em patched and painted over.”

“Can you show me where?” Bosch asked.

Cardinale entered his garage and Bosch followed, signaling Lourdes and Luzon to follow. The shop owner led them to the rear of the first garage bay.

“Back here,” he said. “There were holes in this wall that looked like they were from bullets. I remember thinking that at the time. We patched them all up.”

He pointed behind a workbench that was covered with tools and pipe-bending vises. The area fit with the description Bosch had gotten from the witness Martin Perez.

“Okay,” Bosch said. “We’re going to have to move this bench and the tools out of here. We need to open the wall.”

“And who closes it back up?” Cardinale asked.

“We have a city crew here that will make the necessary repairs. I can’t promise it will be all painted and back to normal by the end of the day, but we’ll get it there.”

Cardinale frowned. He didn’t put much stock in the promise. Bosch turned to Lourdes.

“Let’s get the city guys in here to clear this and then bring the metal detector first,” he said. “Let’s move fast, maybe get out of here before the neighborhood takes notice.”

“Too late,” Lourdes said.

She signaled Bosch over into a private conversation.

“We have a problem,” she said in a whisper. “The LAPD guy says Tranquillo Cortez is across the street.”

“Are you kidding?” Bosch said. “How’d he find out so fast?”

“Good question. He’s out there with some of his boys.”

“Come on.”

Bosch walked quickly out of the garage, with Lourdes following. Across the street was a lavandería with a small front parking lot. The business had not yet opened for the day, but there was a car in the lot, a classic old Lincoln Continental with pearl-white paint and suicide doors. Its suspension had been dropped a few notches so that it would barely clear a speed bump. Three men were leaning against its side with their arms folded, their tattoo sleeves on full display. The man in the middle wore a flat-brimmed Dodgers cap and a long white T-shirt that went down to his thighs. He was the smallest of the three but presented as the man in charge. Bosch recognized him from a photo on a SanFers organizational chart at the SFPD gang unit office. Tranquillo Cortez.

Without hesitation Bosch crossed the street.

“Harry, what are we doing?” Lourdes whispered from behind.

“Just gonna ask him a few questions,” Bosch said.

As they entered the laundry’s parking lot, only Cortez pushed his hips off the car and stood tall to greet Bosch.

“Officer, how are you today?” he said.

Bosch didn’t answer. He walked directly up to Cortez and leaned down to get in the shorter man’s face. He noticed the diamond earrings on both sides and the two blue tears tattooed off the outside corner of his left eye.

“Cortez, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m waiting for the laundry to open,” Cortez said. “You know, wash my clothes, see how white my whites can be with Tide and all.”

He picked at his T-shirt and adjusted it like he was looking in a mirror.

“Who told you we were coming here?” Bosch said.

“Hmm, that’s a good question,” Cortez said. “I’m not sure I remember. Who told you to come here?”

Bosch didn’t answer. Cortez wore his hat up high. He had shaved sidewalls with “VSF” tattooed above his right ear and “13” above his left. He smiled and his dark eyes became slits.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Bosch ordered.

“You arresting me if I don’t?” Cortez challenged.

“Yeah, I’ll have you arrested for interfering with a police investigation. Then, who knows, maybe they make a mistake and put you in the Pacoima Flats tank and we see what happens next.”

Cortez flashed the smile again.

“That’d be fun,” he said. “For me, but not them.”

Bosch reached up and slapped the brim of Cortez’s Dodgers cap, knocking it off his head to the ground. A dark anger momentarily invaded the gangster’s eyes. But then it cleared and Cortez returned to his standard smirk. He glanced back at his seconds and nodded. They pushed off the car and one opened the back door of the Lincoln for Cortez while the other retrieved his fallen hat.

“Catch you later, homeboy,” Cortez said.

Bosch didn’t respond. He and Lourdes stood there until the Lincoln pulled out of the lot and headed down San Fernando Road.

“Harry, why’d you do that with the hat?” Lourdes said.

Bosch ignored the question and answered with his own.

“How’d he know about this?” he asked.

“Like Sergeant Rosenberg said yesterday,” Lourdes said. “They’ve got eyes everywhere.”

Bosch shook his head. He didn’t believe that Cortez had shown up just because he got a message from someone who happened to see the police activity at the garage.

“We might as well pull out of here right now,” he said.

“Harry, what are you talking about?” Lourdes said. “They’re in there, getting ready to take down the wall.”

“Cortez was gloating. Why else would he show up here? He must know there’s no slugs in the wall and no case.”

“I don’t know. That seems like a stretch. He’s not that smart.”

“Really? Well, we’re about to find out.”

They crossed back over to the auto shop and Bosch was stopped by Tom Yaro, the LAPD detective from Foothill Division who was on hand to represent his department, since the search was being conducted on his city’s turf. Yaro was dressed down for the occasion, wearing blue jeans and a black golf shirt. He had jet-black hair that didn’t look natural and had deposited liberal amounts of dandruff on his shoulders. He was little more than a babysitter on this operation and seemed put out by it, as though he felt that the LAPD shouldn’t take the back seat to the smaller SFPD. He had been given few details of the case, but he knew who Tranquillo Cortez was and had sounded the alarm about the gangster showing up across the street. He now wanted to know what was going on. Bosch gave him the short version.

“Our suspect somehow got wind of the search and got up early to come watch,” he said.

“That’s fucked up,” Yaro said. “Sounds like you sprung a leak.”

“If we did, I’ll find it.”

Bosch walked on past him and back into the garage. He watched as a metal detector usually used to find water mains was moved over the back wall. It easily picked up the lines of screws used to secure drywall to the interior studs, but no other alerts came up. The bullet that was fired into Cristobal Vega’s head had been a metal-jacketed .38 slug. Similar slugs should have registered as easily as drywall screws.

Despite his feeling that the search for bullets was for naught, Bosch decided to follow through with the execution of the warrant and told the city workers to cut through the drywall and bring the wall down. He reasoned that while Cortez may have dug the slugs out of the wall long ago, the interior side of the drywall would still show where bullets had gone through and the wall had eventually been patched. It would be at least a minor confirmation of the Perez’s story. Most likely not enough to move the case closer to prosecution, but confirmation just the same.

The workers cut out floor-to-ceiling slices of the drywall between the studs. The inside surface of each sixteen-inch-wide cut was then examined by the detectives for indications of bullet entry.

The third cut had what they were looking for. It was clear that there had been two perforations — matching Perez’s story. They were small, bullet-size perforations and there was no indication that any effort had previously been made to extract the slugs. This contradicted Bosch’s theory about why Cortez had showed up across the street to gloat. Rather than knowing there were no bullets in the wall, he knew something else that made him confident enough to show up.

The shots were spread four inches apart on the drywall, an indicator that they were part of the same test firing that Perez had described. The unpainted cinder block corresponding to the drywall penetrations showed impact damage but no bullets. The team had borrowed an evidence technician from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which contracted with the tiny SFPD to do all lab work. It was his job to pick through the rat droppings, hair, and other debris at the bottom of the space created by the 2 x 4 framing between the drywall and the cinder-block wall. His name was Harmon and he used a metal pick to search through about six inches of debris that had built up inside the wall, spreading it all out on the floor of the shop.

Bosch recorded Harmon’s efforts on his cell phone, knowing that at some point he might have to lead a jury through the steps he had taken in finding the evidence against Tranquillo Cortez.

“Got one,” Harmon said.

He used the metal pick to knock a slug out of the packed debris and across the concrete floor. Bosch leaned down, still holding the phone out to record. When he saw the slug, his renewed hopes for the case took another tumble. The projectile had split its metal casing and pancaked upon impact with the cinder block inside the wall. Bosch would wait for the expert opinion but he had been around enough cases to know that the bullet was too damaged to be considered for comparison with the bullet that killed Cristobal Vega.

“And here’s the other one,” Harmon said.

He picked out the second slug with a gloved hand and held it up. Bosch’s eyes went to it with urgency.

But this one was in even worse shape. It too had pancaked but it had also shattered. He was looking at about half of the bullet.

“There’s more,” he said, even though someone of Harmon’s skill would already know this.

“Still looking,” Harmon said.

Bosch felt his phone buzz with a call but he let it go to message so he could continue to video Harmon’s search.

Harmon soon found the rest of the second bullet and it was in as poor shape as the others. He then went through evidence-collecting procedures. He spoke without looking up at Bosch.

“Detective, it looks like you’ve been around,” he said. “You probably know what I’m going to tell you.”

“No good, huh?” Bosch said.

“Not for comparison on a scope,” Harmon said. “We’ll be able to determine a brand match and there’s more than enough for metal-alloy comparison, but you know how that goes.”

“Right.”

The content of the slugs could be determined and compared to the bullet that killed Perez, possibly leading to a conclusion that the bullets came from the same manufacturing group and lending some credence to the witness’s story, but it would be nowhere near as definitive as the marks left by the gun that fired them. It was the difference between saying that the bullets came from the same batch and that they were fired by the same weapon. The difference had reasonable doubt written all over it.

Bosch was seeing the case go away as he stood there.

“I want to do the metal-alloy testing anyway,” he said.

It was a last desperate shot.

“I’ll talk to the boss,” Harmon said. “I’ll tell him it’s a good case for it and will let you know.”

Bosch knew that when he would hear back was anyone’s guess. The alloy testing would take money and time. The SFPD was usually last in line at the sheriff’s lab. Any sort of special work would go on the when-we-can-get-to-it list.

Bosch backed away from the grouping at the wall, giving Lourdes a look that said this was going nowhere. He addressed the head man of the Public Works crew.

“Okay, we’re going to need to put this place back together,” he said. “We want to keep the one piece of wall where we found the bullet holes. So you’ll have to replace that.”

One of the men grunted his assent and they headed out to the truck for their tools and a fresh piece of drywall to replace the old one.

Lourdes huddled with Bosch.

“So, if there were bullets in the wall after all, what was Cortez so smug about?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “He knew something, but I doubt he knew the slugs would be useless.”

Lourdes shook her head and then stepped back as the city workers walked a large sheet of fresh drywall into the garage bay.

Bosch’s phone started buzzing again, and he walked out of the garage as he pulled it out of his pocket. The caller ID was blocked but he took the call anyway.

“Bosch.”

“Harry Bosch?”

“That’s right, who’s this?”

“Ted Lannark, Sheriff’s Homicide. You got a minute?”

“What’s up?

“What can you tell me about a guy named Martin Perez?”

All at once Bosch knew why Cortez had acted like he had the world on a string.

“He’s a peripheral witness in a gang murder I’m working. What is he to you?”

“He’s dead and I have to find out who killed him.”

Bosch closed his eyes.

“Where?” he asked.

“His apartment,” Lannark said. “Somebody put a round in the back of his head.”

Bosch opened his eyes and looked around for Lourdes.

“Bosch, you wondering how I knew to call you on your cell?” Lannark asked.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “How?”

“Your business card with the cell handwritten on it was in his mouth. Like it was a message or something.”

Bosch considered that for a long moment before responding.

“I’m on my way.”

“We’ll be here waiting.”

13

It was almost as if the killer wanted to make it easy for the landlord to clean up and re-rent the place. Martin Perez had been made to kneel in a walk-in shower with yellowed tiles and a glass sliding door. He was then popped once in the back of the head. He crumpled forward and to his right, the splatter of blood and brains contained within the enclosure, some of it even conveniently dripping down the drain.

The forensics team had not yet removed the business card that had been snugged between Perez’s two front teeth and was easily readable as it protruded from his mouth.

It was clear to Bosch that the weapon had not been a .38, as this bullet had gone through the victim’s skull and exited explosively. Bosch saw chipped tile on the wall Perez had been facing as well as on the floor near the drain. The marks were clean white and not yellowed by time and grime.

“You find the round?” Bosch asked.

It was the first question he asked after five minutes of studying the crime scene. He had driven out to Alhambra with Lourdes. Sheriff’s investigator Lannark and his partner, Boyce, had taken an initial debriefing on the Martin Perez investigation and then escorted them into the bathroom to view the crime scene. At the moment, it was interdepartmental cooperation at its finest.

“No,” Lannark said. “But we haven’t moved him. We think he could have it in the gut. Goes through his head, hits down-angle on the wall in front of him, bounces down to the floor and then up into him before he hits the ground. New meaning to the double-tap, huh?”

“Yeah,” Bosch said.

“Seen enough? How ’bout we back on out of here and talk some more outside?”

“Sure.”

They went outside to a courtyard in the center of the two-story apartment building. Boyce joined the huddle. Both of the sheriff’s men were seasoned detectives, calm in demeanor, with eyes that never stopped moving and observing. Lannark was black and Boyce was white.

Bosch started with questions before they got the chance.

“Has TOD been established?” he asked.

“Another resident of this fair place heard voices, then a muffled shot about five this morning,” Lannark said. “After that, she heard some more yelling and then running toward the street. At least two people.”

“Two voices yelling after the shooting?” Bosch asked.

“Yes, after,” Boyce said. “But this isn’t about you asking us questions, Bosch. We’re still asking you.”

“Right,” Bosch said. “Ask away.”

“Number one,” Boyce said, “if this guy was some kind of witness in a case, why wasn’t he under protection?”

“We thought he was protected,” Bosch said. “He thought he was protected. He was out of the neighborhood, ten years removed from the gang. He said nobody knew where he was and he turned down physical protection or relocation. We didn’t use his real name in reports or on the search warrant application.”

“Besides that, we were early into his information and had not confirmed any of it,” Lourdes said. “That was what the search we were conducting this morning was for.”

Lannark nodded and looked from Lourdes to Bosch.

“When did you give him your business card?” he asked.

“At the end of the first interview,” Bosch said. “I’ll have to look up the exact date — about four weeks ago.”

“And you’re saying he was not associated with anybody from the old neighborhood?” Lannark asked.

“That’s what he told me,” Bosch said. “Confirmed by our gang intel guys.”

“So, what’s your gut on this?” Boyce asked.

“My gut?” Bosch said. “My gut is that we sprang a leak. Somebody on our side told somebody on that side about the search. It got to somebody who knew what we would find in the wall of that garage, so he took out the witness who could connect the dots.”

“And that’s this guy Tranquillo Cortez?” Boyce said.

“Somebody working for him,” Bosch said.

“Cortez is a shot caller now,” Lourdes said. “He’s top rank in the gang.”

The sheriff’s men looked at each other and nodded.

“All right,” Lannark said. “That’s going to be it for now. We’ll finish up here and I’m sure we’ll be in touch soon.”

On the way out of the center courtyard to the gated entrance, Bosch scanned the concrete, looking for blood drops. He didn’t see any and soon was in the passenger seat of the city car assigned to Lourdes.

“So, what do you think?” Lourdes said as she pulled the car away from the curb. “Did we fuck up?”

“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “Maybe. Bottom line is Perez refused protection.”

“You really think somebody leaked to the SanFers?”

“I don’t know about that either. We’ll look at it for sure. If there was a leak, we’ll find it. It could have been Martin saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. We may never know how it happened.”

Bosch thought about the judge who had signed the warrant. He had asked Bosch several questions about the unnamed source in the affidavit, but it seemed he was only being thorough, and he had never specifically requested the real name. Judge Landry had been on the bench at least twenty years and was a second-generation jurist, having run for the superior court spot his father had occupied for thirty years until his death. It seemed unlikely that information in the warrant or discussed in his chambers would somehow have gotten to Tranquillo Cortez or any of the SanFers. The leak, intentional or otherwise, had to have come from somewhere else. Bosch started thinking about Yaro, the LAPD gang detective assigned to be on hand for the search. All gang detectives had sources in the gangs. The steady flow of intel from the gang was vital and sometimes information had to be traded in exchange.

Lourdes was working her way up to the 10 freeway so they could head west and back toward San Fernando.

“It seemed like you were looking for something when we were walking out,” she said. “Anything specific?”

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “Blood.”

“Blood? Whose blood?”

“The shooter’s. Did you work out the ricochet angle in the shower?”

“No, I couldn’t get in there because you men were clogging up the whole bathroom. I stood back. You think the shooter got hit with the ricochet?”

“It’s possible. Might explain the yelling the witness heard after the shooting. The sheriffs were thinking it hit Perez, but the angles didn’t look right to me. I’m thinking the bullet came low, went between Perez’s legs and hit our shooter. Maybe in the leg.”

“That would be good.”

“As soon as they roll that body, they’ll know, but we might have a chance at getting ahead of them on this. You think your boy J-Rod has an idea who the SanFers use these days to do their patching?”

“I’ll ask him.”

She pulled her phone and called her cousin Jose Rodriguez, who was the SFPD’s resident gang intel expert. By law, every hospital emergency room and legitimate physician had to report to authorities any case involving a gunshot wound, even if the injury is claimed by the victim to be accidental. This meant that criminal organizations had illegitimate doctors on call whom they could rely on to do medical patchwork at any time of the day or night and to keep quiet about it afterward. If Martin Perez’s killer was hit with the ricocheting bullet, then it was likely that he and his accomplices would have gone back to their own turf to seek medical attention. The SanFers’ turf was wide-ranging in the north valley and there was no shortage of shady doctors and clinics an injured man could go to. Bosch was hoping that J-Rod would be able to point them in the right direction.

While Lourdes talked in Spanish to her cousin on the phone, Bosch considered for the first time the question that had been hanging since he’d gotten the call from Lannark. Had he gotten Martin Perez killed? It was the kind of weight no cop needed or wanted but it was a risk that came with every case. Asking questions could be dangerous. It could get people killed. Perez had been out of the gang for years, had a job, and was a productive member of society when Bosch approached him behind the shoe store and asked for a light. Bosch believed he had taken appropriate precautions but there were always variables and potential risks. Perez hadn’t voluntarily pointed the finger at Tranquillo Cortez. Bosch had used age-old police tactics and squeezed the information out by threat. It was from that decision that Bosch’s guilt came.

Lourdes finished her call and reported to Bosch.

“He’s going to put together a list,” she said. “He doesn’t know how current it will be but it’s doctors who have been go-to guys for the SanFers and the eMe.”

“When do we get it?” Bosch asked.

“He’ll have it for us by the time we get back to the station.”

“All right, good.”

They drove in silence for a while. Bosch kept going back to his decision to squeeze Martin Perez. His review of it still had him doing the same thing.

“You know the irony of this?” Lourdes said.

“What irony?” Bosch responded.

“Well, Perez led us to that garage and we found the bullets but they were no good for comparison purposes. The reinvestigation would have probably ended there this morning.”

“True. Even if we got a metallurgy match, the D.A. wouldn’t have gotten too excited about it.”

“No way. But now with Perez getting taken out, there’s a case. And if we get the shooter, it may get us to Cortez. That’s the definition of irony, right?”

“I’d have to ask my daughter. She’s good at that stuff.”

“Well, it’s like they say, the cover-up is worse than the crime. It always gets them in the end.”

“Hopefully that’s how it works here. I want to put the cuffs on Cortez for this.”

Bosch’s phone started buzzing and he pulled it out. The caller was unknown.

“They rolled the body,” he predicted.

He accepted the call. It was Lannark.

“Bosch, we pulled the body out of the shower,” he said. “Perez wasn’t hit on the ricochet.

“Really,” Bosch said, acting surprised.

“Yeah, so we’re thinking, maybe the shooter got hit by his own bullet. Maybe the leg or the balls — if we’re lucky.”

“That would be true justice.”

“Yeah, so we’re going to do hospital checks, but we figure the gang behind this probably has its own people for situations like this.”

“Probably.”

“Maybe you could help us out and get us some names of people we can check on.”

“We can do that. We’re still on the road but we’ll see what we can come up with.”

“Call me back, okay?”

“As soon as we have something.”

Bosch disconnected and looked over at Lourdes.

“No bullet in the victim?” she asked.

Bosch stifled a yawn. He was beginning to feel the effects of the all-nighter he had spent with Ballard in Hollywood.

“No bullet,” he said. “And they want our help.”

“Of course they do,” Lourdes said.